Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,

where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges.

If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jh.

That's public health question at jh.edu for future podcast episodes.

This is Lindsay Smith Rogers.

More than a decade after electronic cigarettes became broadly available in the U.S., their merits are still being debated.

Do these products help people quit smoking?

Do they carry serious risks that should not be overlooked?

This week, we hear from two tobacco control experts in a two-part series.

Part one today features Dr. Nancy Rigotti, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical

School. She recently published an editorial about the utility of e-cigarettes for smoking cessation

in the New England Journal of Medicine. She shares her views with Dr. Josh Sharfstein.

Look for part two next, where we'll hear from another academic expert who's

raising concerns about health risks associated with e-cigarettes. Let's listen.

Professor Dancy Rigadi, thank you so much for joining me on Public Health on call.

It's great to see you after a number of years where we have not been in touch, but I certainly

remember you as one of my medical school advisors. Really appreciate your being here today.

My pleasure. Nice to see you too.

So our topic is nicotine and electronic cigarettes. And I know you have worked a lot in this area and thought a lot about

this. And maybe I just start with a general question. How should we think about the health

risks of nicotine as compared to the health risks of, say, cigarettes? We know that cigarettes

are really deadly, that they kill about half of the people who use them

...